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gwern comments on Rationality Quotes: October 2009 - Less Wrong
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Hey, Darwin predicted and explained punctuated equilibrium all the way back in The Origin of the Species. It's remarkable how often the old masters hit a target generations ahead of their time. Or rather, it would be if I didn't already know that human beings don't as a rule draw the full benefit from the evidence at hand - which implies a small variation in the accuracy of the extrapolation leads to startling insight.
(Not having read the Latin - chiefly thanks to not being fluent in the Latin - I can't swear it's a perfect translation, but I saw it in the book and had to quote it.)
There is a quote, though I cannot find it now, to the effect that 'It is an old parlor game among American philosophers to show that Peirce thought of something first.'
But he did!
It's funny because it's partly true - he did an impressive amount, and stuff which has yet to be dug out of his scores of volumes - but some Peirce fans take it too far (I had one professor who the quote applied well to).